Normally, Schwarzenegger's signature on AB3034 - or the lack of it - would be irrelevant.

The only reason the Governor has any leverage at all in the matter is that the state constitution gives him a couple of weeks to make up his mind, i.e. until well after the deadline to amend ballot propositions has passed. Running out the clock is known as an implicit or pocket veto.

# Governor's action. Within 12 days after receiving a bill, the governor may sign it into law, allow it to become law without his/her signature, or veto it.

# Overrides. A vetoed bill is returned to the house of origin, where a vote may be taken to override the governor's veto; a two-thirds vote of both houses is required to override a veto.

In practice, I seriously doubt Arnold will allow AB3034 to simply lapse if supermajorities in both the Assembly and the Senate approve a final version by Monday. He'll figure out some pretext to "make an exception" so voters can have their say. After all, the HSR bond will have virtually no effect on state finances in 2009.

Therefore, the person you should be contacting is your representative in the Assembly. He or she should accept the version passed by the Senate without further modifications.

rafael - In principle, couldn't he also immediately veto the bill, and then the legislators could vote to override the veto? This would technically allow him to keep his word while still letting AB 3034 become law. The problem is that I doubt there would be time for this kind of back-and-forth (even if we assume it's all rehearsed).

My reading of AB3034 is that it effectively prevents bond monies from going towards an Altamont alignment since it was not one of the HSR routes identified. It even goes so far as to require direct (i.e. non-transfer) service between the termini -- which is not only idiotic from an operational standpoint, but apparently was an attempt to deflect the biggest problem in the EIR.

2704.04.[...] (2) As adopted by the authority in May 2007, Phase 1 of thehigh-speed train project is the corridor of the high-speed trainsystem between San Francisco Transbay Terminal and Los Angeles UnionStation and Anaheim. (3) Upon a finding by the authority that expenditure of bondproceeds for capital costs in corridors other than the corridordescribed in paragraph (2) would advance the construction of thesystem, would be consistent with the criteria described insubdivision (f) of Section 2704.08, and would not have an adverseimpact on the construction of Phase 1 of the high-speed trainproject, the authority may request funding for capital costs, and theLegislature may appropriate funds described in paragraph (1) in theannual Budget Act, to be expended for any of the following high-speedtrain corridors: (A) Sacramento to Stockton to Fresno. (B) San Francisco Transbay Terminal to San Jose to Fresno. (C) Oakland to San Jose. (D) Fresno to Bakersfield to Palmdale to Los Angeles UnionStation. (E) Los Angeles Union Station to Riverside to San Diego. (F) Los Angeles Union Station to Anaheim to Irvine. (G) Merced to Stockton to Oakland and San Francisco via theAltamont Corridor. (4) Nothing in this section shall prejudice the authority'sdetermination and selection of the alignment from the Central Valleyto the San Francisco Bay Area and its certification of theenvironmental impact report.

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The bill does not preclude redefining the spine of the network to run via the Altamont corridor, as long as its a single route that includes both San Francisco and San Jose. In practice, only variation #9 (or something very similar) would meet that requirement and still cross the Altamont Pass.

The bill also still explicitly allows for money to be spent on what CHSRA calls the "HST overlay", identified as corridor G.

However, unless someone forces CHSRA's hand, it seems very unlikely that any high speed tracks will be constructed in this corridor anytime soon.

2704.09. The high-speed train system to be constructed pursuantto this chapter shall be designed to achieve the followingcharacteristics: (a) Electric trains that are capable of sustained maximum revenueoperating speeds of no less than 200 miles per hour. (b) Maximum nonstop service travel times for each corridor thatshall not exceed the following: (1) San Francisco-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40minutes. (2) Oakland-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40 minutes. (3) San Francisco-San Jose: 30 minutes. (4) San Jose-Los Angeles: two hours, 10 minutes. (5) San Diego-Los Angeles: one hour, 20 minutes. (6) Inland Empire-Los Angeles: 30 minutes. (7) Sacramento-Los Angeles: two hours, 20 minutes.

Note how there is no mention of Sacramento-SF in the requirements (even though other Phase 2 projects like San Diego and Oakland are listed). Is this an oversight, or deliberate?

It is always a bad idea to rush through poorly conceived bills. The so-called fiscal "controls" is just a non-binding, self-selected advisory committee. Those kinds of committees never work -- the Bay Bridge "Technical Committee" wound up picking a bridge design $5 billion more expensive than other logical alternatives.

do you always base decisions that will impact the next two generations on what's been happening in the past 30 days? Talk about myopia.

You might want to check out the weekly, monthly and annual average gasoline prices in California.

Prices at the pump will fluctuate by as much as 30% in any given year, due to a combination of gyrating oil markets, seasonal changes in demand and the fact that California has fuel standards so stringent only a relatively small number of local refineries are set up to meet them. Combined with fuel taxes that are low compared to Japan and Europe, that generates a lot of price volatility.

Average over 12 months at a time and you'll see that the per-gallon price has gone up by roughly 30 cents every year since 2002. Regular as clockwork. The relative rate of increase is slowing, but it's still much higher than general inflation. What's more, there is no obvious reason to believe this will change anytime soon.

Speaking of which, I live near the 'alternative' neighborhood of Hillcrest in San Diego. I just returned from getting my daily coffee at Peets, which is in Hillcrest, and happened upon an annual street fair.

It is HUGE... probably 30k to 50k people. And, lots of "No on Prop 8" t-shirts and signature gathering.

Initially, I thought they were registering peeps to vote... but no, it was signature gathering effort to gain info on where the proposition stands.

Didn't make sense to me for a couple reasons.... 1) everyone there was gay-friendly and very likely already had a 'no' position on 1. So, it was a biased 'survey' if that was the intent. 2) The October-November election season is 2 months away.... it's a bit too late to gather info on where people stand in order to guide/influence a marketing campaign.

And after thinking about it a bit more... I am thinking that the real intent is to give some arm-chair political activist something to do... give them a t-shirt and clip board and let them feel like they are contributing.

I signed the petition, or whatever it was really.... despite the possibility of getting on a mailing list, which I hate. So, I helped them out....

...and at the same time discussed Proposition 1.

So, they got my signature and promise to vote down Prop 8 while I got at least one vote for Prop 1.

Well Robert has been claiming the State won't survive unless Prop 1 or(a) passed, because there won't be any gas or because we can now see that the price of gas is always going to be unfordable on the high side.

His perspective no more outrageous than mine. In point of fact, the price of gas will probably mirror strength of dollar and market conditions. Pretty amazing that if you have to pay more for gas, you use less.

He would really have autos banned and certainly wants no expansion of the highway system.

I object strongly to his views. The project should be judged by what is supposed to do for transporting passengers. The project ignores Sacramento and Oakland, in favor of Gilroy!

Diridon wants a monument to himself in the bilevel $2 billion dollar Diridon station in San Jose.

Banning autos? I think not. No, anon, the problem is that we foolishly decided to rely on autos alone for our commuting and mass transportation needs in California. That was a stupid move and we're feeling the effects. I *love* driving - I was just out in Carmel Valley today in my car - but driving should be for pleasure and occasional hauling trips. There's no good reason why driving should be the main method we get to work or get around our state.

As to gas prices, that's the subject of tonight's post, as I was expecting you or someone like you would make the point you just made.

Correction,The HSR project INITIALLY ignores Sacramento and Oakland; and rightfully serves San Jose (Northern California's largest city) and San Francisco (Northern California's second largest city) on the initial main line. A $2 billion dollar Diridon Station in downtown San Jose? YEAH BABY!! Robert, proposed VTA 1/8 sales tax measure for BART to SJ will cost an average of $36 per year...$3 per month for SC County taxpayers!! Looks like BART to SJ could happen after all. Lastly, I haven't read anything in the mainstream media (ie SJ Mercury News) about this stupid lawsuit of Morris Brown's...it's miniscule and not worth wasting fine newsprint to write about, so no need to worry about it. Go Prop. 1 and HSR!

Interestingly, we could find a situation where the Governor might find himself actively campaigning against the HSR bond issue because it doesn't have the specific changes that he wanted in it, while the reason the changes aren't in the proposition is because he vetoed the bill passed to put the changes in.

This is along the lines of the kind of things that will face the HSR project all along the way. This one is most notable for the ironies stated above, but future problems will no dount be more along the normal lines of NIMBYism and cost.

The LA County sales tax might suffer a similar fate. The legislature needs to pass a law to allow for the sales tax to go on the ballot, presumably Arnold will be vetoing this one too. The other pitfall is the multitude of local politicians who are threatening to torpedo the entire $30-$40 billion dollar plan because their pet project isn't on the "build list". The thinking here being that if they don't get their way, they might as well ruin it for everyone else too.

When you are talking about such huge amounts of money, the kookiness that will eventually take place has essentially no bounds as the above examples show.

Other Robert

BTW, my e-mail to the governor (the corrected spelling of governot, which may have been more appropriate considering) was bounced back because "Unable to deliver message to the following recipients, due to being unable to connect successfully to the destination mail server"

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The California High Speed Rail Blog is a creation of Robert Cruickshank. The articles posted here are the opinion of their respective authors and no other entity. To contact Robert, send an email to his last name at gmail dot com.